Innovation & Infrastructure

Ford Motor Company has announced that it will test the use of captured carbon dioxide to develop foams and plastics for its vehicles. The new products will be used for seating and under-hood applications, according to a Ford press release. “Ford is working aggressively to lower its environmental impact by reducing its use of petroleum-based […]

About a year after the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) stood up a field office at the 70-year-old nuclear-weapons lab, the agency has launched a dedicated website for legacy nuclear cleanup at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico. The Environmental Management Los Alamos Field Office (EM-LA) website is located here, […]

Battelle Energy Alliance has paid the Energy Department $60,000 to settle an electrical accident that happened last year at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL), a company spokesperson confirmed this week. “The DOE Office of Enforcement received the BEA-signed copy of Consent Order WCO-2016-01, and payment for the monetary remedy, on May 5, 2016,” a spokesperson […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has not yet completed its physical security infrastructure plan, despite a nearly decade-old requirement by Congress for it to do so, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in a report released on May 13. The report said physical security infrastructure, or the protection and accounting of nuclear materials, has […]

In The NNSA: National Security Technologies (NSTec), the contractor that manages and operates the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS), purchased two Sandstorm unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) for a program at the facility that develops sensor technology for these systems, the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Nevada Field Office announced Wednesday. The two small- to medium-sized systems […]

The Department of Energy’s Advanced Combustion Systems (ACS) program is offering up to $1.5 million for two to six oxy-combustion or chemical looping applied research projects, the department said this week in a funding opportunity announcement. “Awards resulting from this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) will improve the overall economics for these two pathways ensuring that […]

The former heard of corporate venture capital at BP, Issam Dairanieh, will take the helm of CO2 Sciences’ initiative to convert carbon emissions into saleable goods. CO2 Sciences and its parent organization, the Global CO2 Initiative, were launched in January at the World Economic Forum annual meeting. The organizations are working toward the goal of […]

Carbon dioxide binding organic liquids (CO2BOLs) in a neutral acid form could be used for carbon capture, avoiding a common thickening problem with the substance, researchers at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Washington state have discovered. “Nobody was considering the neutral acid form for these systems before. The conventional idea was that CO2BOLs would […]

National Security Technologies (NSTec), the contractor that manages and operates the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS), purchased two Sandstorm unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) for a program at the facility that develops sensor technology for these systems, the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Nevada Field Office announced Wednesday. The two small- to medium-sized systems capable of carrying […]

As the world works to decarbonize but fossil energy demand is sustained, carbon capture and storage technology is also likely to be in demand, the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization said Tuesday in its Australia 2030 report. “With high abatement and a global push towards environmentally-friendly operations, Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) has […]

If carbon capture and storage technology is embraced, significant amounts of “unburnable carbon” would become burnable, according to a new report by the Imperial College London’s Sustainable Gas Institute. It is widely accepted that to hold global temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius, some known fossil fuel resources will have to remain unused. Unsurprisingly, less […]

Scotland’s location on the North Sea is ideal for the development of carbon capture and storage hubs, Stuart Haszeldine, director of Scottish Carbon Capture and Storage, said Monday in an editorial published in the Herald Scotland. Haszeldine noted the findings of a study published last week by the Energy Technology Institute. “The first storage can […]

About a year after the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) stood up a field office at the 70-year-old nuclear-weapons lab, the agency has launched a dedicated website for legacy nuclear cleanup at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico. The Environmental Management Los Alamos Field Office (EM-LA) website is located here, and […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy, faced with the expiration of its cooperative agreement with Summit Power Group’s Texas Clean Energy Project (TCEP), on Friday extended the deal by seven weeks, but committed no further funding to the initiative during that time. “[T]he Energy Department’s Office of Fossil Energy granted a no-cost extension […]

The Department of Energy still plans to develop a field research center in Oak Ridge, Tenn., to test new technologies for addressing mercury contamination in the environment, but the federal agency has decided not to construct the facility at the Horizon Center business park because of objections from the city of Oak Ridge. “The City […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration said this week it has migrated all up-to-date data on buildings at its eight sites to the BUILDER system, which it called a “cutting-edge infrastructure management tool” backed by the National Academy of Sciences. In total, more than 225,000 data points covering inventory and condition of NNSA real property buildings […]

Another issue has come under scrutiny at Stack 110, a significant emissions point in the 9212 uranium-processing complex at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in Oak Ridge, Tenn. According to a March 25 report by staff of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, a monitoring team with Y-12 contractor Consolidated Nuclear Security noted that enriched […]

NorthStar Medical Radioisotopes said Wednesday it is upgrading its production operations at the University of Missouri Research Reactor (MURR), adding a new high-capacity filling line the company says will ultimately quadruple its dispensing capacity for the medical radioisotope molybendum-99. Moly-99 is used in imaging procedures for cancer, heart disease, and bone and kidney disease. The […]

Nuclear waste management technology developer (and procurer) Kurion has been given the proverbial keys to the kingdom in being bought by French multinational Veolia – access to the resources of a far larger organization with a global scope. Now it must prove itself worthy of those keys, according to Kurion co-founder John Raymont. The Paris-based […]

Colorado-based carbon capture technology company ION Engineering on Thursday announced the appointment of Erik Meuleman as chief technology officer. Meuleman comes to the company from Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), where he served as research team leader. “Dr. Meuleman is a leading researcher in industrial gas separations, whose nearly two decades of […]

The United Kingdom’s Energy Technologies Institute, following a 12-month study, has confirmed the viability of five potential carbon storage sites in the North Sea. “All five sites have been studied in detail. As a result, there is confidence regarding the ability to inject CO2 at commercially significant rates, the capacity to store CO2 in commercially […]

Looking out to 2040, the energy mix of all Canadian provinces are expected to change, though the use of carbon capture and storage in fossil fuel energy generation may be limited to Saskatchewan, home to the world’s first commercial-scale post-combustion CCS retrofit to an existing coal-fired power plant, according to an assessment issued Thursday by […]

The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory on Wednesday announced the selection of Pennsylvania State University to establish and lead the University Coalition for Fossil Energy Research. The six-year initiative will be directly supported by the DOE Office of Fossil Energy’s Coal and Oil and Gas programs. DOE funding for the coalition totals […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy has run into problems getting commercial-scale carbon capture and storage demonstration projects off the ground, indicating it shouldn’t be involved in the business of commercialization at all, several Republican members of the House Science, Space, and Technology Subcommittee on Energy said Wednesday. “DOE does not have adequate […]

It is possible to reach a future with net-zero carbon emissions, meaning that for all emissions released an equal amount of emissions are taken out of the air through biological or technical means, according to a new report from oil giant Shell. “In spite of the many challenges, the practical details of providing enough energy […]

NorthStar Medical Radioisotopes said Wednesday it is upgrading its production operations at the University of Missouri Research Reactor, adding a new high-capacity filling line the company says will ultimately quadruple its production capacity for the medical radioisotope molybendum-99. Moly-99 is a medical isotope used in imaging procedures for cancer, heart disease, and bone and kidney disease. The […]

A carbon capture pilot project housed at Norway’s Technology Center Mongstad resulted in “breakthrough” results, technology developer Carbon Clean Solutions Ltd. announced Tuesday. The pilot tested CCSL’s patented “APBS” carbon separation chemical from November 2015 to the end of March 2016. “The test prompted highly successful results, with plant availability levels of 100% and no […]

In the absence of a national plan to provide £1 billion in funding for a carbon capture and storage demonstration project, the U.K. should partner with Norway to continue development of the technology, British Labor Party MP Alan Whitehead said in an editorial Monday. The U.K. pulled the plug on a £1 billion CCS commercialization […]

The Boundary Dam Unit 3 carbon capture and storage project was online 100 percent of the time in April, operator SaskPower reported Monday in a monthly update. April is the third month this year in which the project has met that milestone. Maintenance in February shut the plant down for a few days, and that […]

The installation of carbon capture technology on the ethylene manufacturing plants that make plastic bags and packaging from natural gas and the utilization of captured carbon in nearby depleted oil fields could promote development of a CCS network, according to a study by scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. “The team’s study found that […]